Fraudster who claimed £30,000 in disability benefits pictured riding a horse

A woman who was given over £30,000 in benefits to support her mobility disability has pleaded guilty to fraud after she was caught riding a horse.

Michelle Hanney, 51, had claimed she could only walk between 20 and 50 metres and needed to use a wheelchair when going outside.

She was then awarded both Personal Independence Payments and Universal Credit totalling £33,711.24 between May 2021 and August last year.

But Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) investigators became suspicious of Hanney when they spotted a photo of her sitting atop a stallion on Facebook.

During a surveillance operation, they took further pictures of her walking freely alongside a pony at a stables.

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Hanney, from Rotherham, pleaded guilty to fraudulent activity at Sheffield Magistrates Court and was given a 12-month community order.

She was prosecuted on the basis of a lesser amount, £10,384.50, which the DWP say it will now try to recoup, but the overpayment still stands at £33,711.24.

Tom Pursglove MP, Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work, said the conviction was an example of how the government was cracking down on benefit cheats.

He said: "The vast majority of disability benefit claims are correct, and we know the difference that these benefits can make to people.

"However, there is a small minority of people out to cheat the system.

"This conviction is another example of our relentless focus on finding those taking the taxpayer for a ride and bringing them to justice."

How much of a problem is benefits fraud?

The DWP overpaid an estimated £8.6 billion in benefits in 2021-22, with £6.5 billion due to fraud, its latest annual report shows.

This was up from £8.2 billion the year before, but more than double what it was before the pandemic.

Asked how long it will take to recover the sum Peter Schofield, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), said: “As we are successful at identifying fraud, as we’re successful at going through the targeted case review, so we will say to people, ‘actually, you owe us money’, and then that becomes a payment that is due to the department and that gets added to the debt balance.

“So a sense, I’m afraid, that the success of the targeted case review and our work on fraud, to the extent that it’s getting into that fraud that’s already in the system, it will lead to the need to recover overpayments and that then will add to debt balances.

“So I suspect that, because of tax credits coming in, but also because of the work of our anti-fraud activity, I suspect debt balances will go up before they start to come down.”

Schofield added that staff tasked with recovering debts engage with claimants with compassion and empathy, and take individual circumstances into account when negotiating repayments.